


walls

by suspendrs



Series: albums [3]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:40:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25291033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suspendrs/pseuds/suspendrs
Summary: The thing about having been on the move so much for the past five years is that now, once they’re finally able to sit down and rest for a bit, they don’t really know what to do with themselves. Louis loved the pace of the band, for all he and the others complained about it; he isn’t very fond of sitting still, and he absolutely loathes boredom, and there was very little space in their lives for either of those things while they were so busy putting out an album every year and touring more often than not. Being in the same room as Harry while neither of them are under the pressure of keeping up appearances feels like being in a room with a total stranger, and the amount of trouble they’re having trying to get to know each other again is really rather alarming.Or, a love one whole decade in the making, inspired by Louis's debut album.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Series: albums [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566919
Comments: 26
Kudos: 136





	1. kill my mind

**Author's Note:**

> don't say i never did anything nice for you
> 
> ok so the timeline of this fic is absolutely ridiculous and so incredibly complicated and probably does not line up with the real life timeline but i tried my hardest i swear to you and if you see any inconsistencies in the way this plot lines up with the other two album fics no you don’t ❤️  
> some of these chapters correlate directly to chapters from harry’s albums; i’ll include the references in the notes for each chapter, but if you want to find the easter eggs on your own, you can ignore those notes ~~(but do check the end notes for a surprise)~~  
>  as always, i recommend listening to the album while reading this fic! it really helps with the ✨vibes✨
> 
> please do not translate, repost, or recreate this work in any way. thank you!

A lot of things change all at once in the summer of 2010. It’s a new decade, full of endless opportunity, and Louis plans to make the most of every second of it. By 2020, his life could be wildly different than it is now, and that’s a risk he’s more than willing to take. 

It’s not that he doesn’t like his life right now, of course; he loves his life, loves his family, loves his hometown, his friends, his school, his football team. It’s just— it could be _more_ , there could be way more out there for him than there is here in Doncaster, so, in the spirit of taking this new decade by the balls, he auditions for the X Factor and, astoundingly, he _makes_ it.

It’s all a blur from there. There’s bootcamp, days and days of singing, dancing, meeting people he’ll probably never see again, and some he hopes to see a lot more of. He makes some friends, makes some enemies, makes some bets with himself about who among this group is going to make it big, but before the week is over, he makes possibly one of his favorite connections of the whole experience, and he makes it in the bloody _toilets_.

He’s minding his own business, really, at the urinal near the end, his mind in a million places. He’s got so many things he’s got to do, he’s got to call his mum, he’s got to text Stan about what Simon Cowell said to him earlier, he’s got to—

He feels someone step up to the urinal beside him, but he doesn’t pay the other guy much attention. It’s a busy bathroom, they’re on break from dance rehearsals, and as much as Louis wishes this guy had picked one of the other few empty urinals, Louis’s just about finished, anyway.

He makes to step away when he’s through, but some clown is directly behind him, waiting in line for the sinks, so Louis stumbles, knocking shoulders with the poor kid who stepped up beside him. The other kid stumbles a little, too, turning with the movement, and the next thing Louis knows, he’s got a stranger’s pee on his hand and the stranger himself is squeaking like a hurt mouse, shoving himself as close to the urinal as he can get to quickly finish his business.

“I’m so sorry,” they say at the same time, and the kid looks up quickly.

“I peed on you,” he says, mortified.

“My fault, honestly,” Louis says, even though the feeling of this random kid’s pee drying on his hand is making him want to throw up, sort of. “Well, that guy’s fault, but he’s not even paying attention.”

The other kid laughs a little, zipping up his jeans and turning around. “Still sorry,” he says.

“What’s your name?” Louis asks.

“Harry,” the kid says, the blush on his cheeks beginning to dissipate.

“Harry?”

“Styles,” Harry says.

“Louis Tomlinson,” Louis says. “I’d shake your hand, but.”

“Yeah, you should wash your hands, probably,” Harry says, ushering him toward the line for the sinks. “Why didn’t you do that first?”

“Well, when a guy pees on me, I usually like to know his name _first_ ,” Louis says. “But you’d already done it, so, next order of business was finding out what to call you.”

Harry laughs, cheeks pinking up again. “You get peed on often, then?”

“Never,” Louis says. “Probably won’t make a habit of it.”

“Yeah, me either,” Harry says. “Peeing on people, that is.”

There’s a lull while they both wash their hands, but Louis lingers by the door while Harry finishes up, because there’s something about Harry that he likes, something about the easy banter, the way Harry seems to blush every time Louis speaks, the way he’s maybe the prettiest person Louis’s met this week.

“Harry Styles,” Louis says, making Harry blush yet again. “I’ve got a feeling you’re going to be a star, Harry Styles.”

Harry laughs awkwardly. “Really?”

“Really, in fact,” Louis says, pulling a paper towel out of the dispenser and handing it to Harry. “Can I have your autograph? It’ll be worth big money someday, I bet. Or maybe I’ll keep it,” he says.

“I don’t have a pen,” Harry says, spooked.

“First lesson of being a big star, Harry Styles, is always carry a pen,” Louis says, pulling a Sharpie out of his back pocket and handing it over. He doesn’t bother telling Harry that he found that on the floor a few hours ago and decided to scoop it up, because it makes Harry blush _again_ , and Louis’s starting to think he should be keeping a tally.

“You don’t have to call me by my first and last name, you know,” Harry says, but he’s grinning, pressing the paper towel against the wall to scribble out his signature. “You can just call me Harry.”

“Alright, Just Harry,” Louis says, accepting the paper towel and the Sharpie back without looking away from Harry’s eyes. He’s got very pretty eyes, very green, very bright when he directs his smile right at Louis that way. “I’ll see you around?”

“See you around, Louis Tomlinson,” Harry says, giving him one last, strong blush for the road, and then he’s gone, knocking into someone else as he makes his break for the door. 

Louis bites his lip to keep from smiling too hard, looking at the paper towel in his hands just to see if Harry’s autograph is as impressive as his dimples, but this time, it’s his turn to blush. There’s Harry’s autograph — perfectly impressive, he’s been practicing — but at the bottom of the paper towel, there’s another line of writing, a phone number written out carefully.

Louis spends the rest of the day thinking about it, the cute boy with the cute smile and rosy blush, who peed on his hand and then gave him his phone number.

He thinks the 2010s is going to be his decade.

-

If Louis had known, when Harry Styles peed on him in the toilets at Wembley stadium, that just a few days later they’d be put into a band together, that Louis would throw himself into Harry’s arms like they’ve known each other for years instead of having texted back and forth for two days, that they’d be here, now, at Harry’s bungalow in the middle of nowhere, with three other scared, teenage strangers—

Well, Louis doesn’t know what he would’ve done, but he would’ve liked to have _known_.

It’s weird how much things have changed in such a short amount of time. Just a few weeks ago, Louis was waffling over whether or not he actually wanted to audition for the X Factor, and now he’s sitting around a bonfire with these random guys and he can’t stop looking at each of them, memorizing this moment, knowing that he’s about to go through a _lot_ with these four boys, and he barely even knows their names yet.

If he’s honest, he doesn’t really know what’s coming next. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen with this band, what’s going to happen with the show; for all he knows, they could be voted off the first week, and then they’ll all go home to their respective cities and never speak again. Or — and this is the option he’s favoring — they could become a worldwide sensation, the biggest band since the Beatles, traveling every corner of the globe together and taking the world by storm.

They all seem nice enough, he thinks. He wouldn’t mind rising to global superstardom with them, or, like, releasing a couple of albums, at the very least. Liam seems like kind of a knob, but Louis thinks he can get him to lighten up in time, Niall’s an absolute ray of sunshine, and Zayn’s a bit quiet, but Louis already likes him quite a bit.

Harry, on the other hand. Harry. Where does Louis even start with Harry?

There’s something about this guy — this _boy_ , this curly haired, dimple-cheeked, stringbean boy — that Louis can’t get enough of. When they arrived here, Harry announced awkwardly that someone was going to have to share the master bed with him, and Louis nearly broke his neck volunteering. They’ve been all over each other all week, inseparable, giggling and teasing and poking and playing, and Louis has to admit, he’s absolutely smitten.

He’s never had a crush like this before. He’s sure that’s what it is: a crush, a big, fat, aching crush. He has a girlfriend, he keeps having to remind himself, but he’s never felt even a fraction for her as he feels for Harry. There’s something about him that is so sweet, so addicting, Louis cannot keep his hands to himself. He always wants to be next to him, touching him, looking at him, and he’s sure everyone else has caught on by now, too, but no one seems to really care.

Harry, for one, seems to love it. He seems to adore being the center of Louis’s attention, even goes so far as to seek out Louis’s eyes in the rare moments that they’re not already trained on him. He still blushes as much as ever, but he’s completely come out of his shell this week, and Louis doesn’t know how he’s ever going to get out of this bungalow not completely, head over heels in love with Harry Styles.

After they put the fire out on the last night of their stay, Harry goes straight for the master bedroom; he’s been quite tired all day, Louis knows, because they stayed up most of the night last night talking about nothing and everything. Louis’s pretty exhausted, too, but not too tired to sneak into the bedroom after Harry, watching him pull on his pajama bottoms and then immediately pantsing him.

“Hey,” Harry whines, turning around to smile tiredly at him, pajama bottoms still around his ankles. “Rude.”

“Sorry, saw a chance, had to take it,” Louis says, shrugging one shoulder. He turns away to change into his own pajamas, and Harry pulls his bottoms back up in his own time, pulling on the soft t-shirt he’s been sleeping in all week. Louis wonders, distantly, if he can get away with stealing that t-shirt before they leave tomorrow, because he thinks he’s going to miss Harry something fierce when he’s not able to see him every day anymore, and he might need a souvenir.

“Hey,” Harry says, as soon as Louis’s dressed. Louis glances at him over his shoulder, and Harry sits down on the bed, folding his legs in front of himself.

“Hey,” Louis says, plopping down beside him.

“Remember,” Harry says, cheeks pinking even in the dark, “at bootcamp, when you asked for my autograph?”

“And you gave me your phone number?” Louis says cheekily. They haven’t talked about it yet, but Louis’s been trying to figure out how to bring it up all week.

“Yes,” Harry says, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to hide the way he’s smiling. “When you said you thought I was going to be a big star… did you mean that?”

“Yeah,” Louis says. “Well, actually, I was mostly just flirting with you, but I do genuinely think you’re going to be a big star,” he says. “Bodes well for me we’re in the same band.”

“You were flirting with me?” Harry says, looking up at him.

“Harry, of course I was flirting with you,” Louis says. “You _peed_ on me, and I didn’t punch you in the face, I asked for your autograph. How could you not think I was flirting with you?”

“I did think you were flirting with me, but I wasn’t sure if it was wishful thinking,” Harry giggles. “Do you— so, like, do you like me?” he asks, voice growing incredibly smaller with every word, like the fear is mounting in his throat while he’s speaking.

Louis swallows. “Maybe,” he says, looking down. “But I— I have a girlfriend.”

“You love her?” Harry asks, sounding put out.

“Well— no,” Louis says. “I don’t know. We haven’t dated long.”

“Are you— do you like boys?” Harry asks. 

“Maybe,” Louis says. “In theory, yes. But I’ve never liked— y’know, like, _a_ boy.”

Harry nods, staring at the ground. 

“Do you?” Louis asks. “Like boys?”

“Yeah,” Harry says. “I think I’m bi, or something, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t really like labels,” he says.

“Oh,” Louis says, “cool.”

It’s quiet for a minute, and then Harry shifts a little closer. “You’ve never liked a boy?” he whispers, looking right into Louis’s soul when Louis looks up.

“I,” Louis says. “Maybe I have. Do,” he stutters.

Harry smiles, glancing at his mouth. “Do?”

“Maybe I do,” Louis breathes. 

Harry’s smile grows, and he bites down on his lip. “Cool,” he says, and then he’s gone, crawling up the bed to tuck himself under the covers. Louis stays frozen for a few minutes, trying to get his brain back in order, but it’s tough work.

Something about Harry throws him off, gets down deep in him and messes with every part of him. Every time Harry meets his eyes, Louis feels his mind die, but the rest of him comes to life, like Harry unlocks some natural, intrinsic part of himself that he didn’t know existed. He crawls up the bed, too, lying down stiffly beside Harry, staring up at the ceiling for a long few minutes, trying to figure out what it is about Harry that makes him so wild inside.

“Harry?” he asks after a while, voice too loud in the dark room.

“Hm?” Harry hums, his back turned to Louis.

“Do—” Louis chokes a little, has to cough to clear his throat. “Do you like _me_?”

Harry doesn’t answer for a minute, and then, “Yes.”

Louis grins, closing his eyes and tipping his head back against the pillow.

Harry shifts beside him, and Louis opens his eyes just in time to see Harry turning over, pulling himself closer and curling up on Louis’s chest. Louis shifts to get his arm around him, and Harry smiles, hooking one leg between Louis’s and closing his eyes.

Harry drifts right off to sleep like that, but Louis lies awake for hours, counting Harry’s breaths and trying to memorize everything he’s feeling right now, every place Harry’s body is touching his own, every twitch of Harry’s eyelids, every soft noise he makes, every sigh he lets out in his dreams. He’s going to have to break up with Hannah, that’s for sure, and then he’s going to have to figure out how to do this, how to navigate the show, the band, the performances, and falling in love all at once, but right now, he’s a little too numb and tingling at the same time to think about anything other than the next time he’ll be able to fall asleep next to Harry. It’s scary, feeling something this intense, but he likes it, loves it, and he already knows he never wants to lose it.


	2. don't let it break your heart

Louis is tired all the way down to his bones, but his muscles are still jumping, like he’s going to twitch right out of his body. Sometimes, he almost wishes he would; sometimes he feels so constrained, so trapped, it’s like his very own skin is holding him prisoner. It’s like he’s wrapped up in a tight wool sweater and he’s just itching to be free of it, sweating under all of his restraints, but the layers just keep piling up.

On nights like these, sleep doesn’t come easy. Every time he thinks he’s about to doze off, his leg jerks, or his arm, or his neck, and it makes him so mad he thinks he could put his fist right through the tour bus wall. It’s so cramped in this tiny little bunk, he almost hates it, but it’s also the closest thing he has to home; it’s consistent, at least, more consistent than the smattering of hotel beds he’s slept in all over the world, and he’ll take the familiarity of his own pillow over the luxury of being able to stretch his legs out all the way any day.

A long time ago, the first time they did all this, Harry used to stay out here with him, in the hotel parking lots. Even when they were driving through the night, Harry would squeeze himself right into Louis’s bunk, make himself comfortable on top of Louis’s chest, and pass out. Somehow, it never felt as crowded back then as it does right now, when Louis’s in here alone, squirming inside his own body, sleep feeling miles away.

If he had a little less pride, he’d scoop himself out of this bunk and find his way into the hotel, use the key card he knows Harry left for him in the lounge of the bus and go get into Harry’s bed, where he belongs. As it is, though, he can’t bear the thought. They fought earlier, him and Harry, and for all his mother always told him to never go to bed angry, sometimes it’s just easier to sleep on all of the frustration and let it wash away on its own in the morning light. Maybe it’s not the best way to solve problems, but it sure is the easiest, and it’s been working for almost five years now.

It’s not like they fight a _lot_ , but they do fight a lot more than they used to. Things have just gotten so much harder lately, everything has gotten so much more intense, and there never seems to be any reprieve. Louis loves Harry more than anything in the goddamn world but _fuck_ , sometimes he wishes they could spend just a little less time together. 

But then again, he thinks, rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling of his bunk, maybe that isn’t true. Harry called him ignorant and immature merely hours ago and Louis’s already aching to be with him again, to curl up beside him and go to sleep and then wake up and never talk about it, like they always do. 

He could just do it. He could just get up and go inside, find Harry’s room and forget all about it. Harry probably wouldn’t even say anything, he’d just lift his arm for Louis to fit himself under and go back to sleep, and it would probably still take Louis a little while to drift off, but at least he wouldn’t be alone.

He gets as far as to peel back the curtain on his bunk, but before he can get up, his eyes fall on the closed curtain opposite his own, a faint rectangle of light glowing through the material. He pauses, fingers still curled around the edge of his curtain, heart sinking.

Truth be told, he isn’t sleeping out here because he fought with Harry. It goes deeper than that; it goes all the way back to what seems to be the source of most of the tension in the band these days, the thing no one wants to say out loud.

“Zayn,” Louis whispers, and the light behind the other curtain goes off. “Zayn?”

Zayn’s curtain pulls open, but it’s too dark to see his eyes. “Yo.”

“Are you awake?” Louis asks quietly.

Zayn doesn’t say anything, but Louis can feel the glare he’s given.

“Do you wanna go smoke?” Louis asks.

Zayn doesn’t answer, but he shifts in his bunk, and for a second or two, Louis’s heart swells with hope; he and Zayn haven’t smoked together in ages, Zayn’s hardly spoken to any of them in weeks, but maybe, just maybe, if Louis can get him to warm up again, everything will be okay.

“Nah,” Zayn says, pulling his curtain closed again.

Louis bites down hard on the tip of his tongue. He thinks about pushing, about begging, about crying and asking what’s wrong, what happened, what’s going to happen next. He can’t, though, so he just slides the rest of the way out of his bunk, bare feet making silent contact with the ground.

“I’m gonna go outside,” Louis says, voice still soft. “So, um. If you change your mind,” he trails off. Zayn doesn’t say a word.

Louis grabs his coat out of the lounge and pulls it on harshly, pushing the door of the bus open with his foot and sitting down hard on the bottom step, digging his cigarettes out his pocket. His hands are shaking as he tries to light the cigarette, a combination of the cold March night and the effort he’s making not to cry, but eventually he gets it, letting the cigarette sit between his lips for a long few minutes without breathing in.

He takes exactly one puff of smoke before the cigarette burns down to the filter, and doesn’t bother reaching for another when he flicks it away. He hurries back inside the bus, tossing his coat onto the sofa and shuffling back to the bunks.

“Zayn?” he whispers, eyes wide in the dark as he watches Zayn’s curtain. The light from his phone is off, and if Louis listens hard enough, he can hear Zayn’s low, even breathing, fast asleep. 

He doesn’t bother putting his coat back on on his way back out of the bus; he finds the key card Harry left in the kitchenette and tears all the way down the steps, shoving the doors closed behind him and storming into the hotel. The number on the paper slip around the key card says 1325, so once Louis has found his way to the elevators, he hits the button for the 13th floor, shaking like a junkie in his t-shirt and joggers.

Room 1325 is all the way down at the end of the hallway, and he must make a lot of noise coming inside, because when he rounds the corner toward the bed, Harry’s up, fumbling to pull his sweatpants on and reaching for his phone at the same time.

“Oh,” he says, going still when he sees that it’s only Louis. “I thought—”

Louis sobs, dropping his chin to his chest and covering his face with his hands. He doesn’t get to hear what Harry thought; he’s too tired to even stand, dropping to his knees and then his ass on the plush carpet.

“Lou?” Harry says, and suddenly he’s there, pulling Louis into his arms. 

“He won’t even talk to me,” Louis cries, pushing his face into Harry’s neck. “He won’t smoke with me, he won’t even _look_ at me—”

“It’s not your fault, Louis,” Harry says, stroking his hand down Louis’s spine.

“Then whose fault is it?” Louis demands. 

“I—” Harry says. “I don’t know.”

Louis hiccups a little, pulling away to wipe at his face. “I don’t know, either.”

Harry keeps rubbing his back, but when Louis looks up, Harry’s eyes are wet, too. “Is that why you stayed out there tonight?” Harry asks, voice low. “To be with him?”

“Bus one, y’know?” Louis says miserably. “I didn’t want him to be alone.”

Harry crumbles a little, tugging Louis close again. He tucks his chin over Louis’s head, and Louis can feel his breathing stutter where he’s pressed against Harry’s chest.

“I don’t know what to do,” Louis says. “I don’t know what the problem is, and I don’t know how to fix it, but I need to. I’m so scared, Harry, what if he—”

“Don’t even say it,” Harry breathes. “Don’t, Louis. It’ll all work out.”

“I don’t know—”

“It has to,” Harry says, looking down at him. “It always does.”

 _Not always_ , Louis thinks, but he doesn’t say anything, just digs his nose into Harry’s sternum and tries not to let any more tears loose.

“C’mon, let’s go to bed,” Harry says, climbing to his feet and pulling Louis up carefully. “There’s no use staying up crying about it.”

Louis gets into bed as if on autopilot, curls himself around Harry’s back, and stares at the wall for hours. He keeps waiting for Harry to fall asleep in his arms, but it never happens; eventually, Harry turns over, looking up at him with eyes as red as blood.

“Lou,” he says, face twisting up. “What happens if he—”

“I don’t know,” Louis says, before he can finish the thought. 

“Do you think,” Harry asks, trailing off a little. “Do you think he’ll—”

“I hope not,” Louis says. “But I don’t know how to get him back. I don’t know how to—”

“It’s not your job to do that,” Harry says. “You’re not responsible for—”

“But I _need,_ to” Louis says, jaw clenched.

“I know,” Harry says, twisting his arms around Louis’s middle. “But I just think—”

“I shouldn’t have left,” Louis says, trying to squirm out of Harry’s arms all at once. “I should have stayed on the bus with him, I shouldn’t have abandoned him, he’s gonna think—”

“Louis,” Harry warns, trying to hold him still.

“I need to go back out there,” Louis says, prying Harry’s arms off of him and scrambling out of the bed. 

“Louis,” Harry hisses. “You can’t do this, you can’t put this all on yourself—”

Louis doesn’t let him finish, taking off the moment his feet touch the ground. He makes it back to the bus before he’s even decided what he’s going to do next, but when he gets to the bunks, Zayn is still sound asleep, breathing evenly behind his curtain.

Louis climbs back into his own bunk, doing everything in his power to slow his own breathing. The sun is already rising, Louis can see the light starting to filter into his bunk where he never fully closed the curtain. When Zayn starts to stir, eventually, Louis makes a point of opening his curtain even a little more, just so that Zayn can be sure that he’s here, that he never left, that he would never dream of leaving. Zayn gets up, shuffles to the toilet, and Louis squeezes his eyes shut, praying that the sentiment will work.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t.

-

The first show without Zayn is the hardest thing Louis’s done to date. He tries to tap into the anger, the bitterness, but it all pales in comparison to the bone-crushing sorrow they’re all feeling. He takes over some of Zayn’s high notes, nails them, but it all feels wrong. 

The fans don’t know yet, of course, but he doesn’t know how in the world they haven’t already figured it out. Maybe they have, but they’re as unwilling to accept it as Louis is. None of it feels real, nothing at all, especially as Louis curls up in his bunk that first night, staring at the empty bed across from his own and trying to force himself to believe it.

Everyone’s on the bus tonight, to Louis’s dismay. They’re driving through the night to the next show, but even if they weren’t, he’s sure no one would let him be alone right now, least of all Harry, who keeps sticking his big head through the gap in Louis’s curtain to offer him things.

“Do you want tea?” Harry asks, trying to act like his eyes aren’t red and watery, too. “Niall’s making tea, and—”

“No,” Louis says, closing his eyes. “Thanks.”

“Okay,” Harry whispers, disappearing for a few blessed seconds. He’s back before long, though, hot breath on Louis’s face. “We’re stopping at the gas station,” Harry says, “do you want anything?”

“No,” Louis says again. “Booze.”

“Lou,” Harry says quietly.

Louis peels his eyes open, looking up at Harry’s face. Harry looks about as broken as Louis feels, and Louis crumbles, shoving himself back against the wall and holding up his blankets. “Will you come in here?”

Harry climbs in without another word, tugging the curtain closed and plunging them both into darkness. This bunk is far too small for the both of them, but when Harry curls up against his chest and slots their legs together like puzzle pieces, Louis hardly even notices. 

It takes a while to fall asleep, but Louis hasn’t slept in days, and the exhaustion is rolling over him at the same speed as the road passing under them. It’ll be a while before any of this feels normal, before anything ever feels normal, but then again, what is normal? None of this has ever made sense, at least as far as Louis can tell, and maybe this is just another bump on the road. They were so strong, the five of them, and maybe they can be strong with only four, too. No matter what happens, Louis’s never going to be alone; he’s got his boys, especially this one, sleeping soundly in his arms, face mashed into his neck. Whatever the world throws at them, they can take it, and they’ve proven that time and time again. It might hurt like hell right now, but in time, they will heal, and they will be better for it.


	3. two of us

{This chapter will remain unwritten out of respect for Louis and his family.}

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ you **don't** have to read this, but here is an open letter on my thoughts on canon and tragedy in rpf.](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XkAgUuNj6WgI8esAGdZMKGamixAaxkzI0CROwj1k6Bo/edit?usp=sharing)


	4. we made it

None of it feels real until Louis hears the little jingle of the alarm system when the front door closes behind him, three quiet notes that he’s truthfully never even really noticed before, not until right this second. It washes over him in the cadence of that little tune, and the handle of his suitcase slips right out of his hand and crashes down on the hardwood floor.

It’s over. It’s all over.

It’s so hard to believe. Five years ago, if you’d told him he would honestly be a little bit relieved to be on the other side of all this, he would’ve told you to fuck off. It seems like just yesterday he was meeting the four guys he knew he was going to change the world with, and now, looking back, all that really seems to have changed is the apparent permanence of the exhaustion in his bones, the bags under his eyes, the pain that lives way deep down inside of him like an itch he just can’t reach to scratch.

He can’t believe it’s over.

He doesn’t bother picking up his suitcase, doesn’t think he could manage it on top the sudden weight in his chest. He drags himself to the living room to throw himself on the sofa, elbows digging into his knees while he rubs at his face, trying to wrap his mind around it all.

Just yesterday, he was on top of the world. Just yesterday, _last night_ , he was onstage, just him and his boys, his best friends, his favorite people in the world. Now, not even twenty-four hours later, they’ve performed their last show together as One Direction, and nothing is ever going to be the same.

They all needed a break, he knows that, but he hates that it had to happen this way. He hates, more than anything, that there’s no definitive end to the break, nothing to look forward to, nothing to do now except try to figure out what happens next. He already feels so alone, so useless, sitting here in this massive house in London as the entire world comes to a halt around him.

The front door chimes its opening jingle, and then the closing jingle, and then there’s a crash from the front hall. Louis rushes out to see what the commotion is, but Harry’s already picking himself up off the ground, shoving Louis’s suitcase, which he apparently tripped over, with the heel of his boot.

“Cheers, Louis,” he mutters, pushing Louis’s suitcase against the wall and dropping his own on top of it. “Don’t worry about it, I don’t need any help carrying the shit in from the car, I’ll just—”

Louis steps into his space to cut off his grumbling, looking up at him and biting down hard on the inside of his cheek. Harry melts instantly, dragging Louis into his arms and holding him tight. Louis goes easily, pressing his face into Harry’s neck, curling his hands into fists in the back of Harry’s t-shirt.

“Sorry,” Louis says, barely audible.

“It’s okay,” Harry says, pressing his lips against the shell of his ear. 

Louis pulls away slowly, glancing over at the pile of bags next to the door. He doesn’t want to unpack, not a bit, because the second they do, this becomes real. The second he accepts it, it will all actually be over.

“Are you okay?” Harry asks, hand lingering on Louis’s shoulder even after Louis’s pulled away. 

“Yeah,” Louis says. “Just— it’s weird.”

“I know it is,” Harry says. “I know you didn’t really want this to happen, but—”

“It’s freezing in here,” Louis says, just to change the topic. “I’m gonna go turn up the heat.”

“Louis,” Harry says, pulling him back before he can get far.

“I said I’m fine,” Louis says, but he can’t really force the smile to prove it. 

“Okay,” Harry says, but he follows when Louis turns away to go adjust the thermostat, doesn’t leave Louis’s side until Louis’s fiddled with every setting on the goddamn thing. “Can we go upstairs and have a nap?” Harry asks, pulling at the bottom of Louis’s t-shirt like a child. “I’m exhausted.”

Louis smiles, a real one, and Harry grins, dragging him all the way up the stairs to the bedroom. Louis doesn’t have time to marvel about the last time they were both home here long enough to have a proper nap together; Harry pulls him right into bed and under the covers, curling up on top of him and knocking out in hardly a second.

As much as Louis likes the idea of staying awake and wallowing a bit longer, he’s exhausted, too; he’s all sorts of jetlagged and fucked up from the tour schedule. The weight of Harry on top of him, the one thing he can always count on, pulls him under before long, and they spend the rest of the day like that, curled up together while the dust they’ve been kicking up for years settles around them.

As hard as it was keeping up with the pace of the past five years, somehow slowing down is even harder. Louis’s already itching for something to do, something to latch onto, something that will keep him busy enough to ignore the tightness in his chest when he thinks about what will happen next.

Harry, for one, has fully leaned into his time off. He’s thrown himself into his yoga practice, gotten back into photography, has even written a few songs in the time they’ve been off from the band. Louis’s tried to write, but he doesn’t really work that well on his own, and writing songs with Harry is so complicated, for the same reasons that everything else in their lives is so complicated. These days, it feels like even being in the same room as Harry isn’t allowed, even when they’re alone in their own house.

He spends a lot of time alone, ignoring the entire world in hopes that it will ignore him in return. Isolating himself like this has never been the answer to a single one of his problems, but it doesn’t mean he can’t try it one more time; nobody else seems to understand what he’s going through, anyway, least of all Harry, who falls asleep every night like the weight of the future isn’t pressing down on him as if it is determined to press him to death. 

It’s nearing dawn when Louis gives up on sleeping for good, the melatonin pills he swallowed earlier sitting heavy and useless in the back of his throat. He sneaks out of bed and down to the kitchen in the dark, filling a glass at the sink and leaning against the cool marble countertop while he sips at it. His occasional insomnia usually stresses him out, because usually he has somewhere to be bright and early the following morning, but right now, he’s got nothing to stress about but stress itself.

It doesn’t take long before he registers movement coming from upstairs. Harry’s like a walking furnace at any given time, but he always complains of being cold at night when Louis’s not curled up behind him. Louis feels the space between them closing like a spring loaded door, but it’s seeming less and less likely these days that the space can stay closed for long.

“Oh,” says Harry’s quiet, sleepy voice, and Louis turns to look over his shoulder. “That was easy.”

“What’s easy?” Louis asks.

“Finding you,” Harry says, shuffling over to nudge Louis’s shoulder with his own. “Usually you give me more of a chase.”

“I do not,” Louis frowns.

Harry hums. “Not always. But recently.”

Louis takes the last sip of his water languidly, dropping the glass into the sink from just enough of a height that it clatters noisily against the porcelain. It makes Harry jump, as if he wasn’t watching it happen, couldn’t predict the noise it would make. “What d’you mean by that?” he asks.

“Maybe I’ve been stupid,” Harry shrugs. “Waiting for you to come talk to me about what’s bothering you.”

“What?” Louis bites, stepping away. “What do you—”

“—Mean by that?” Harry cuts him off. “Don’t act like—”

“How do you know there’s something bothering me?” Louis asks, defensive. 

Harry chuckles lightly. “That’s the stance you’re going to take?”

Louis considers for just a moment, and then steps back again. “How could you possibly think you know how I’m feeling right now?”

“Better,” Harry shrugs.

“Stop that!” Louis growls. 

“Oh dear,” Harry says, watching him with a worried tilt to his mouth. “Cold again.”

“Fuck!” Louis shouts, balling his hands into fists at his sides to resist the urge to pluck the glass out of the sink again and throw it. “Fuck off!”

Harry, as if sensing his thoughts, turns slowly to take the glass out of the sink, stowing it carefully away in the dishwasher. He looks up at Louis expectantly when he’s finished, cocking his head like he’s waiting to see what Louis will do next.

“You don’t get it!” Louis says, jaw clenched. “You couldn’t possibly get it! You’re not scared of the future, you don’t have to worry about what comes next. You don’t need the band to keep you afloat. Being part of One Direction wasn’t the only thing you had going for you. Whatever you do next is going to be bigger and better than the band ever was, and I’m gonna be stuck chasing that high for the rest of my life because I’m not _you_!”

Harry softens immediately, losing every trace of his haughty act. It worked, after all; he pissed Louis off enough to get him to open up, and now that he has, Louis’s already wishing he could take it all back.

“You think that’s true?” Harry says, voice thin like he’s a second from crying.

Louis shrugs, looking down. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“But that’s how you feel,” Harry says.

Louis doesn’t say a word, eyes locked on the floor.

“Louis, I—” Harry says, taking half a step closer. Louis doesn’t budge, and Harry takes it as an invitation to close the distance entirely, pulling Louis into his arms. It’s the wrong move, though, Louis doesn’t want to be held, and he tears away like Harry’s burned him.

“Don’t do that,” Louis bites, eyes full of tears. “Don’t pity me.

“I don’t pity you,” Harry says. “I don’t— I don’t understand how you can think those things about yourself, Louis, I—”

“Of course you don’t,” Louis says. “Because you’re _Harry Styles_ from One Direction, not just _that other guy_ from One Direction.”

Harry appears to be speechless, but Louis can see right through him; it’s not that he doesn’t know what to say, but that he’s terrified of saying the wrong thing.

“It’s not your fault,” Louis says. “I know you didn’t ask for that any more than I did. And I get why you and everyone else wanted to take a break from the band. But I just feel like— I feel—”

“What?” Harry whispers.

“Stuck,” Louis admits. “I feel stuck. I feel like everyone’s going to go on and be alright and I’m just—”

“Can I hug you?” Harry asks. “Can I please hug you, Louis?”

“You can stop cutting me off, is what you can do,” Louis says, stepping back when Harry reaches for him. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Harry says. “I’m not going to leave you behind. Ever.”

Louis looks down, hunching his shoulders to warn Harry off in case he’s going to try for another hug.

“Nobody is going to leave you behind,” Harry says. “You have the most fiercely loyal fanbase of any of us, Louis, you think they’re going to let you fall through the cracks? You remember what they did with No Control? They’re never going to stand for you falling away. And neither am I. But you have _got_ to stop pushing me away, Louis,” he says, voice quiet, strained.

“I feel so far away from you sometimes,” Louis says, barely above a whisper. “And now, if we don’t work together anymore,” he trails off, finally looking up at Harry’s face. “Alright, hug me.”

Harry’s on him in a second, crushing him against his chest and digging his nose behind Louis’s ear. “I’m right here,” he breathes, sending goosebumps rippling over Louis’s skin as if to prove it.

“Yeah,” Louis mumbles.

“And I always will be,” Harry says. “If you think I’ve come this far to lose you now, Louis…”

“I love you,” Louis says, wrapping his arms low around Harry’s waist and holding tight. “I don’t want to do any of this without you.”

“You don’t have to,” Harry says. “No, I might not be on the same stage, or singing the same songs, but I’m always going to be right here, Louis, I swear. The hardest part is over, it has to be. It has to be.”

The hardest part, Louis thinks bitterly, is all of it. Every part is the hardest part, and every time he’s foolish enough to think otherwise, he is almost immediately proven wrong. He doesn’t say that, though, because this time, maybe Harry’s right. Maybe this is what they need. Maybe they’ve made it, after all.

“Come back to bed,” Harry says, releasing Louis from his vice grip and slotting their hands together, instead. 

“I don’t want to,” Louis says. “I don’t want to sleep.”

“Okay,” Harry shrugs. “What do you want to do?”

The question catches Louis off guard. He doesn’t know what he wants to do; he doesn’t want to do anything, really, aside from going back in time to when everything didn’t feel so awful.

Harry drops his hand and moves away, rummaging through the kitchen cabinets for a moment. It’s too dark for Louis to be absolutely sure of what he’s doing, but Harry comes back after a minute holding a familiar container, taking Louis by the hand once again and pulling him toward the back door.

It’s not quite as dark outside as it is inside. The moon is bright and full, and the cold air is a shock to Louis’s system, seeping through Louis’s t-shirt instantly and numbing some of the feeling of the tumult inside of him.

Harry sets everything up quickly, leaving Louis standing by the back door with the tupperware of weed clutched against his chest and dragging the lounge cushion out of the deck box by the pool. He beckons Louis over when he’s finished, settling between Louis’s legs with his back to Louis’s chest on the lounge chair, using Louis’s thigh as a table to roll a messy joint.

“D’you have a light?” Harry asks, glancing over his shoulder at Louis.

“Why the fuck would I have a light?” Louis says. “I’m in my pajamas, and I didn’t know we were coming outside for a smoke.”

Harry snorts, twisting a little more to press his smile into Louis neck. “I thought I was being real sexy and smooth with all this,” he admits.

“Not your best work,” Louis grins, carding his fingers through Harry’s hair. “Can we go inside, then, if we’re not going to smoke? It’s fucking freezing out here.”

“Goddamnit,” Harry sighs, tossing the whole joint back into the tupperware and stumbling to his feet. He helps Louis up, too, and Louis races him back to the house, the two of them giggling like children as they shove past each other through the back door.

There’s no smoke in Louis’s head, no sweet syrup in his veins, but something better, something even more dizzying and soothing. Harry smiles his dopey, opiate smile and Louis can’t think of a single thing in the world to be upset about, high on this moment, this feeling, this man.

Harry kisses him once, sweetly, and then again, slower, and then speaks with his lips still pressed against Louis’s. “Can we go to bed _now_?”

Louis laughs, stealing one last kiss and then pulling away to nod. Harry doesn’t give him an inch of space as they make their way back upstairs, falling back into bed tangled together like they’re lovesick teenagers once more. Things change all the time, for better and for worse; they know that well. Some things, though, a very small select few, never, ever change. For the love of god, Louis thinks, let this be one of those things.


	5. too young

The thing about having been on the move so much for the past five years is that now, once they’re finally able to sit down and rest for a bit, they don’t really know what to do with themselves. Louis loved the pace of the band, for all he and the others complained about it; he isn’t very fond of sitting still, and he absolutely loathes boredom, and there was very little space in their lives for either of those things while they were so busy putting out an album every year and touring more often than not. Being in the same room as Harry while neither of them are under the pressure of keeping up appearances feels like being in a room with a total stranger, and the amount of trouble they’re having trying to get to know each other again is rather alarming.

Louis can’t remember it being like this before. He can’t remember sitting in a room with Harry and not knowing what to say, but right now, Louis can’t stop staring at Harry’s downcast eyes, at Harry trying to pretend he can’t tell that Louis is staring.

Things used to be good, he thinks, before. Before what, he’s not really sure, but there definitely was a time at some point in the distant past when things were fun, when it felt like they were the only two people in the world even when they weren’t the only two people in a room. He’s beginning to suspect that they took for that granted while they had it, because this, _this_ sucks, and he’s not even really sure why.

“Do you like it?” Harry asks, nodding to the plate of untouched food in front of Louis.

It’s only takeaway, from some expensive hipster wannabe Mexican place forty-five minutes away from their house that Harry has been dying to try. Louis likes Mexican food, sure, and this food has to be good for the small fortune he spent on it, but truthfully, he hasn’t taken a single bite.

“You don’t like it?” Harry asks gravely in response to Louis’s blank stare. “Here, do you want to try mine? We can swap, or—”

“What happened?” Louis says, cocking his head curiously at Harry.

Harry startles a little, frowning at him. “What?”

“No,” Louis says, pushing away the plate Harry tries to shove toward him. “What happened to us?”

“Nothing,” Harry says, confused. “What are you—”

“We used to be, like,” Louis says, “I don’t know. Fun. Now we eat takeaway in silence at the kitchen table.”

Harry smiles hesitantly, like he thinks Louis’s kidding. “We’re boring,” he shrugs.

“No, I’m serious,” Louis says. “We use to promise each other that we’d never get like this, remember? We swore we wouldn’t let the world get to us,” he says.

“Louis,” Harry says softly.

“I’m scared,” Louis admits. 

“Of what?” Harry asks.

 _You_ , Louis thinks. “That we’re— I don’t know.”

Harry doesn’t say anything, putting his fork down and pushing his soggy enchilada a few inches toward the center of the table. He folds his hands patiently, like he’s waiting for Louis to finish his thought, which only serves to make Louis more anxious than he already was.

“We’re not us anymore,” Louis says quietly. “We’ve changed.”

Harry quirks an eyebrow. “Have we?”

“We’re eating takeaway Mexican food from central London,” Louis says flatly. “You’re at the dinner table in a Gucci blouse. I feel like I’m— I don’t know.”

Harry frowns a little, looking down at the table. “People change, Louis,” Harry says. “Just because we’re different now doesn’t mean we aren’t us anymore.”

“I guess it’s just—” Louis hesitates, pushing a bit of rice around his plate. “Doesn’t it scare you that we can never go back?”

“Back to what?” Harry asks. “We were miserable, Louis.”

“I know that,” Louis says. “I know we were. But we were young.”

“We were too young,” Harry says. “We were way too young to be doing what we were doing.”

“Yeah,” Louis says, resigned. Harry doesn’t get it, but Louis doesn’t really know how to explain what he’s feeling. This will just be yet another thing they never quite see eye to eye on.

“It’s because it’s over, isn’t it?” Harry asks. “Because it’s out of your control. You wouldn’t go back, if you could, but you _can’t_ , and that scares you,” he says.

“Yeah,” Louis says again, a little more emphatically this time. “That’s exactly—”

“You think I don’t understand you,” Harry says, “but I do. I do, Louis.”

“I don’t think that,” Louis says weakly.

“Look at me,” Harry says. Louis does. Harry smiles at him with all his teeth, but not in the cheesy, exaggerated way he does for the cameras sometimes; the fans call this his _Louis_ smile, the smile he does when he’s happiest, when Louis is the one begetting the response. Louis feels like crying, a little bit, because he feels like he hasn’t seen that smile on Harry’s face in years, not in person anyway, and if he has, he’s horrified to realize that he doesn’t remember when.

“Oh,” Harry says, slightly alarmed, probably at the look on Louis’s face. “Man, don’t you love it when you smile at your boyfriend and he looks like he’s going to cry?”

“Shut up,” Louis chuckles, rubbing at his eyes and finding them a bit damp for reasons he doesn’t quite know how to verbalize. 

“Don’t tell me to shut up,” Harry says in mostly the same light, easy tone from before, but he’s serious. “Just— just talk.”

“About what?” Louis asks.

“Everything,” Harry says. “All of it. You’ve been weird for weeks now and I don’t know how many more times I can talk you out of it, Lou, because nothing seems to be getting—”

“Don’t act like I’m being unreasonable,” Louis snaps. “Don’t act like our lives weren’t just turned upside down again when the break started. I’m not crazy for being upset and confused,” he says.

Harry watches him for a moment too long, and then nods once. “I never said that,” Harry says lowly. 

“Not in so many words, but,” Louis huffs, crossing his arms over his chest petulantly.

The mountain of things that they’ve never really gotten the courage to talk about is beginning to grow in the center of the kitchen table; Louis wonders, briefly, how they’re even managing to see each other over the top of it, or if maybe they’re just peeking through the cracks, at this point, every time they look at each other.

Harry breaks the tension first, turning his face away and making to get up from his seat. Louis feels a flash of fear run through him like he’s never felt in his life and, before he can think about it, he shoves through the invisible pile of rubble on the table, latching onto Harry’s wrist before he can go anywhere.

“I’m scared,” Louis says again, pressing divots into Harry’s forearm. “I’m just— I’m scared, Harry.”

“I’m scared, too,” Harry admits. “Things have changed so fucking much in the past few years, and heaven knows how much they’re going to keep changing in the future. It’s terrifying, Louis. It’s absolutely terrifying not knowing what’s going to happen. But do you know what I can promise?”

“What?” Louis asks, clinging to Harry’s every word like an anxious child.

“I’m going to keep changing,” Harry says. “And you’re going to keep changing. The whole world is going to keep changing, all of it, all the time. But I am always going to run back to you when I get too scared, and I am always going to be here for you to run back to when you get too scared, too. And maybe someday that won’t be enough anymore, but we’ll figure it out. We always do,” he says.

Louis blinks, dropping his eyes to where Harry’s covered Louis’s bloodless knuckles with his free hand. His hands look different than they used to; they’re rougher, and he’s got marks from his rings on all of his fingers, and his skin is tanner and less milky and smooth, and he’s grown into the size of his limbs in the past few years. He’s all grown up, Louis thinks. He’s not the little fledgling he once was, ducking into Louis’s side to hide from the world, always desperate for Louis’s attention, his protection. Now, Louis’s the one begging for that same security, and he’s quickly realizing he has no idea how to accept it.

“Yeah,” he says, loosening his grip on Harry’s arm a little. He doesn’t bother asking what happens if things change too much, if someday Louis isn’t the person Harry wants to run to anymore, if someday the last threads of the past he’s still clinging too snap and send him plunging into the abyss, because Harry doesn’t have those answers, and it wouldn’t be fair to expect him to. “I just wish we knew, y’know?” he says. “I wish we knew how good things were when they were good. I wish we knew how much we’d miss them.”

“If we spend our whole lives thinking about how much we’re going to miss every moment, there won’t be anything left to miss,” Harry says. “Just live, Louis, and worry about worrying later.”

Louis cracks a smile, meeting Harry’s eyes once again. “When did you get so wise?” he asks.

“When’d you get so melancholic?” Harry teases. “Now, eat your fucking tacos, or I will.”

“You can have them, they blow,” Louis says. “I want McDonald’s, anyway.”

Harry chuckles, slapping Louis’s hand away from his wrist, finally, and leveling him with a playful glare. “Some things,” he says pointedly, “never change, hm?”

“Guess not,” Louis says, slipping out of his chair and dumping his plate of barely touched food into the bin. He glances over at Harry before he leaves the kitchen, watching him push a few beans around his own mostly untouched dish. “Six piece McNuggets?” he asks knowingly.

“And a chocolate shake,” Harry grins, blowing Louis a kiss over his shoulder.

Louis smiles all the way out the front door, grabbing his keys off the hook in the front hall and squishing his feet into a pair of Converse he hasn’t tied properly since probably 2013. A few years ago, Harry probably would have come along for this ride, held Louis’s hand over the center console all the way through the drive through, and then he would have put two straws in his milkshake to share with Louis without even asking first. Now, when Louis gets home, Harry snatches his milkshake like a child and runs to the other end of the kitchen table, only allowing Louis to come close enough to hand over his nuggets and be on his way. Louis doesn’t mind it, though, knows Harry would share with him if he asked and, anyway, it’s sort of nice to know that Harry’s grown enough to enjoy his own milkshake without feeling like he owes Louis some of it, too.

Maybe he’s getting a bit too philosophical over a milkshake, he thinks, so he waits until Harry’s let his guard down and then leans over to steal a sip, just for the principle. Harry tackles him to the kitchen floor without a second thought, and by the time Harry’s finished pinning him down to kiss all the taste of the milkshake right out of his mouth, their greasy fast food is just as soggy and unappetizing as their overpriced Mexican takeaway. Time is not kind to Big Macs, Louis finds, the way it is not kind to most Earthly things, but a little unkindness has never slowed him down before, and it’s not going to start now.


	6. walls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is meant to occur before (and to foreshadow the events that occur in) the [woman](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11582040/chapters/26596113) chapter of [the pink album](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11582040?view_full_work=true).

The worst part of walking through hell time and time again is when, inevitably, it stops hurting so much. There comes a point where the soles of your feet grow thick enough to withstand the heat, when your lungs grow strong enough to handle the smoke, your skin toughens and tightens until you’re nothing but leather, a punching bag on legs, taking hit after hit and always swinging back around for more.

It’s not so much the growing strength that gets to you, but the realization that you are complacent in your own torture. It’s the sinking feeling in your gut when you look in the mirror and see every line on your face and every streak of gray in your hair and you don’t remember how they got there. It’s the split second of peace in the morning when you’ve only just opened your eyes, rolling over to find your love sleeping soundly beside you, as weathered and jaded as you are, wanting nothing more than to kiss them awake before you have to leave but knowing that it’ll hurt less for the both of you if you just roll quietly out of bed, instead, calloused feet scraping on the soft carpet floor on the way to the bathroom.

The light over the sink is a little too bright for the hour, so Louis leaves it off, pulling open the blinds over the bathtub to let the soft morning sun filter in, instead. He’s exhausted, but he’s got a long day ahead of him; he combs his hair and brushes his teeth and finds it very difficult not to crawl back into bed beside Harry on his way back through the bedroom to the closet, picking out his outfits for the day.

Yes, _outfits_ , plural. They’ve got three days worth of pap walks scheduled for today, all to be released at different times throughout the next few months, and a few more planned for tomorrow and the next day to save as backups in case there’s any need for damage control before his next haircut, or his next flight to London. 

Louis loves his fans more than anything in the world, he truly does, but they’re too smart sometimes, cause more problems than he cares to deal with. No one is supposed to know that Harry’s here with him this week, hiding out in his public house in LA while he’s on break, but he’s pretty sure that half of his fan base has already figured it out, and that they’re going to see right through all these phony photos in a matter of hours, anyway. He doesn’t know why it matters so much, why he needs to go out of his way to prove that he and Harry aren’t together, that they aren’t even in the same city, that they aren’t even friends, they don’t even speak. He doesn’t understand it all, the urgency with which his team forces the world again and again to believe that Louis is everything that he’s not, why he can’t just be himself and stop trying so hard to keep up all of these fake appearances.

He manages to get out the door before Harry wakes up, but he leaves a note on the kitchen counter before he goes, just to let Harry know that he loves him. It’s not like Harry didn’t know that before, but Louis feels the need to tell him every chance he gets, these days, because sometimes it feels like they’re stretching the piece of thread that connects them to its absolute limit, and Louis lives in fear of the day that it’ll finally snap. 

Lately, he feels like Harry is lightyears ahead of him, and Louis’s losing hope of ever being able to catch up with him. He’s got his first solo album coming out soon, and he just finished filming a movie, as well, and Louis is so happy for him, really, he is, but there’s also a little piece of him that feels like all of his worst fears are coming true, he’s getting left in the dust, shuffled around like a show horse to make money for other people while everyone else gets to live their dreams.

On days like today, Louis tries to put his head down and just get through it, keeping one hand loosely entwined with Eleanor’s and the other constantly occupied, either with a cigarette, a melted iced coffee, or whatever else will keep him from thinking too hard about what he’s doing, what he’d rather be doing. Harry isn’t allowed to text him anymore during stunt days like this, but Louis still checks his phone almost incessantly throughout the day, waiting for a good morning text or something, _anything_ to keep himself distracted.

“So,” Eleanor says; Louis jumps a little, almost forgot she was even there, but she doesn’t seem to catch on. “I was reading this article this morning, on my way to yours, about—“

Louis tunes her out automatically, the way he’s trained himself to do whenever she tries to make small talk. This used to be so much easier, the first time, when they were younger and this seemed like a temporary thing. Now, Louis can barely conceal how much he hates Eleanor, hates everything about the situation, and he knows that she knows it, too, because she fizzles out her story just as awkwardly as she began.

“Anyway, um,” she says, squeezing Louis’s hand a little. Louis wants to shove her off the pavement into the bike lane. “Is Harry excited about his album, and everything?”

He would never admit it, if Harry ever asked, but Louis flinches at the sound of Harry’s name, blood going cold in his veins. Harry is constantly on his mind when he’s out with Eleanor, of course, but hearing his name in Eleanor’s falsely delicate voice feels wrong, like she just swore at him, or something.

“Yeah,” Louis says. That’s that. Eleanor doesn’t follow up, and Louis doesn’t offer anything further. He accidentally makes direct eye contact with a camera lens on the next block and sighs, glancing over at Eleanor to at least give the impression that he’s paying any attention to her.

Eleanor must take the glance as an invitation to go on and, to Louis’s absolute horror, she smiles warmly at him. “I’m excited to listen to it, actually,” she says lowly, as if the cameras will be able to hear what they’re talking about. “Sign of the Times is really incredible.”

Louis doesn’t say anything, his already loose grip on Eleanor’s hand getting even looser at the sound of the camera shutter. God, he hates this, everything about this. He doesn’t know how anyone buys this shit, this fake bullshit, so obviously planned and staged. Louis doesn’t know a single celebrity of his caliber who goes photographed quite as much as he does just walking around Los Angeles with his no-name girlfriend, but the general public doesn’t think twice about this shit, the constant stream of paparazzi photos taken of him. He feels like pasting a sign to his forehead about how stupid the whole world must be to believe in this shit, but that’s not allowed, and even if it were, it’s probably not worth it, anyway.

There will come a day, he’s sure of it, when he’ll be able to look back on these days and see them as merely a spec on the horizon for how far he’s come. He’ll be able to look down on the past and see these memories like pebbles littering the ground beneath all the walls he’s climbed, and the walls may crumble, sure, but they’ll never take him with them, they’ll never bring him as low as he’s been before. Looking at the world from atop those high walls will be so sweet, so good, he’ll never allow himself to be trapped beneath them ever again, no matter who is trying to knock him down.

All he wants to do, all he’s ever wanted to do, is to make music, and that seems to be the one thing he isn’t able to do these days. He’s out here, in the boiling streets of LA, holding the sweaty hand of a girl he can’t stand, writing lyrics in his head that he’ll probably forget by the time he gets home tonight. He can’t help but be a little envious of Harry, sometimes, on days like this; Harry got out of their shitty management the second he could, and now he’s flourishing, accomplishing all of his dreams and goals. Louis wants to be right there beside him, celebrating Harry’s achievements as well as his own, but he’s finding it rather impossible these days to feel anything other than exhausted and jaded and sad. He knows that he won’t feel this way forever, but it’s hard to keep his head up sometimes when he’s constantly getting beaten back down, and he’s afraid that he might succumb to the torment before he ever is free of it.

He manages to make it through all three of the pap walks for the day, and when he makes it home late in the afternoon, he finds Harry in the back garden with his guitar in his lap, scribbling something in his notebook. He looks up as soon as Louis opens the back door, putting his guitar down and opening his arms for Louis, instead.

Louis goes straight to him, lying down in the grass and putting his head in Harry’s lap. Harry hunches down to kiss his head, mussing up his carefully gelled hair with his fingers and waiting for Louis to pry his eyes open to look up at him.

“Hi,” Harry says, smiling gently when Louis meets his eyes. 

“Hi,” Louis says, curling a little closer to Harry so that he can wrap his arms low around Harry’s hips. It’s only springtime in LA, but it’s still probably too hot to be sitting like this. Harry doesn’t seem to mind, though, hunching over to kiss Louis’s head once more, and then the shell of his ear.

“I’m writing a song,” Harry says, nodding toward his notebook. “Can I play it for you?”

“Yeah,” Louis says. “Please.”

“You’ll have to move a bit, love,” Harry says, pushing gently at Louis’s shoulder. 

“No,” Louis mumbles.

“Can’t play guitar with you in my lap,” Harry says, but he sounds fond, still playing with Louis’s hair.

“Tough,” Louis says, hugging him a little tighter and pressing his face into Harry’s lower stomach. 

“Alright, then,” Harry laughs, “maybe another time.” He shifts to lie down on his back, and Louis follows him, resting his head on the soft bump of his hip instead of his thigh. He could fall asleep like this, he thinks, and he’d like to, would love to put his mind to rest for a little while.

“Did you, um,” Harry says after a while, fingers stuttering in Louis’s hair. “Was your day okay?”

“Yeah,” Louis lies. “Wasn’t too bad. We just went to, like, three different Starbucks in different outfits.” 

“Typical,” Harry snorts. “Next time she drags you to Starbucks, you should tell the barista to put real cream in her drink. That’ll end the day quicker, won’t it?”

Louis tries to laugh, but it comes out a little too flat. He hates talking about Eleanor with Harry just as much as he hates talking about Harry with Eleanor, and the mere mention of her out of Harry’s mouth makes his skin crawl, and Harry should definitely know that by now.

“Do you want dinner?” Harry asks, in a valiant attempt to change the subject.

“No,” Louis says. “Just wanna stay here for a while.”

“Okay,” Harry says, petting Louis’s head sweetly once again.

They stay out in the garden until the sun sinks all the way down in the sky, and Louis drifts in and out of consciousness the whole time, listening to the sounds Harry’s body makes under his ear and allowing the world to float away from him.

Someday, he’ll be stronger this. Someday, he’ll stand tall enough to bring down everything in his path between himself and where he wants to be, and nothing will ever dare test him again. For now, though, all he can do is cuddle a little closer to Harry and allow himself to forget about all of it, thinking only of better days.


	7. habit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a reworking of the [sweet creature](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11582040/chapters/26398761) chapter from [the pink album](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11582040?view_full_work=true), from Louis's point of view.

As proud as Louis is of Harry these days, what with his album having just come out, and the movie soon after, and all the positive press and opportunities that have come along with those things, he doesn’t really know what to do with himself now that they’ve both got some downtime once again. Harry’s settling in for a well deserved break, and Louis’s just been treading water in the same spot for years, and it should be nice, really, to have Harry all to himself again, but things are proving to be a little more complicated than he remembers.

He and Harry genuinely have not spent this much time together since right after the band went on hiatus, when they holed up together at home and slept off the previous five years. Once Harry started getting work on his solo album, though, they both learned a lot about the wonders of being alone, and coming back together now that they’re in two wildly different stages of life feels like mixing oil and water.

Louis has been picking tiny, insignificant fights all week, but he knows he’s not the only one feeling the tension. Harry’s been rather irritable as well, lately, as hard as he’s trying to be his usual sweet, adorable self, but Louis is definitely to blame for most of the hostility going on in the house.

Like, for example, when he wakes up late in the morning after a late night writing session to find that Harry has caused him yet _another_ minor inconvenience. The soap pump in their ensuite bathroom is empty, like, _completely_ empty; it’s not like Harry couldn’t tell that it was running low when he used the last of it this morning, but instead of refilling it, he’s just left it for Louis to deal with before he can wash his hands after his morning wee. Louis’s already grumpy this morning, because Harry woke him up by accident when he got up at the ass crack of dawn to go do yoga or whatever, and _now_ Louis’s got to refill the _bleeding_ soap before he can even start his own day. 

He makes a bit of a mess refilling the soap, just to be difficult, and then storms down the stairs, finding Harry having lunch in the kitchen like it isn’t barely eleven in the morning. Harry looks up at him, the picture of nonchalance, and Louis scowls at him.

“You’re actually such an arsehole, do you know?” Louis bites out, glaring at him as he stalks over to the kettle for a cup of tea. “Like, the least considerate person in the entire world.”

“Good morning to you, too, love,” Harry hums. “How did you sleep?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Louis huffs. “I’m trying to yell at you right now.”

“What did I do this time?” Harry asks serenely, taking another bite of his sandwich.

“Fucking- you’re such a fucking cunt sometimes,” Louis says, voice filled with venom. It’s not that big a deal, it really isn’t, but Harry’s nonchalance has him shaking with barely restrained rage, fists clenched at his sides.

“What?” Harry says, with real concern this time, like he’s afraid Louis’s actually got something to be upset about. Louis feels so stupid. “Louis, what happened?”

“Did you not think to refill the hand soap pump when you used the last of it?” Louis says; he’s come this far, he might as well finish chewing Harry out, if only to make himself feel better. “Like, if you use the last of the soap, do you not think you should replace it? The container is literally right under the sink, all you have to do is unscrew the top of the pump and refill it with the jug. But no, that’s too much work for you,” Louis grumbles, pouring the water from his kettle into his mug once the kettle beeps and then going straight back to glaring at Harry.

Harry’s face falls, like he knows exactly what he’s done. He pouts apologetically at Louis, but that just makes Louis’s blood boil even hotter, for some reason, and sets him off on another rant about how annoying it was to have to refill the soap himself before being able to wash his hands.

It’s the stupidest rant Louis’s ever had, honestly, and Harry hardly warrants the dressing down he’s getting right now, but Louis can’t bring himself to stop. Harry’s just looking up at him with those big, stupid princess eyes like there’s nothing at all going on behind them, and Louis spills a little bit of tea out of his mug with the force of his rageful hand gestures.

Harry puts down his sandwich and folds his hands in his lap, like he’s waiting patiently for Louis to finish. Louis hates him so much, sometimes, hates his stupid face and his stupid condescending, fake grimace of remorse, he doesn’t even know what to do with himself.

“Are you even listening to me?” Louis spits. “You’re so fucking—”

Harry, to Louis’s absolute dismay, starts _laughing_. Louis’s all but ready to tell him to pack his shit and get out, and Harry is _laughing_ at him, hanging his head like he’s trying to hide it. Louis slams his mug of tea down on the counter behind him and clenches his fists again, raising his voice a little more to drown out the sound of Harry’s infuriating chuckling.

“This is fucking important, Harry,” he shouts. “This isn’t just about fucking soap, so stop laughing! Do you understand how fucking important it is to have teamwork and cooperation in shared living quarters? Especially in a committed relationship, Harry, I can’t be the only one who—”

Harry looks up at him again, eyes shining, like Louis’s reciting his wedding vows instead of ripping him a new one over hand soap, of all things. He gets up after a moment and shuffles toward Louis, but Louis backs away, still shouting. Harry doesn’t stop until he’s backed Louis against the cupboard, and Louis resists like a cornered animal as Harry wraps his arms around him and drags him in for a hug.

“You can’t just go around using shit up and not doing anything about it, Harry, this is a- what- get the fuck off of me, I’m not done yelling at you!” he shrieks, trying to flail his way out of Harry’s arms.

Harry just holds him a little tighter, forcing Louis’s head under his chin and holding on until he submits. Louis stops shouting, all the anger disappearing from his body as Harry sways a little, until Louis is totally pliant against his chest.

“Sorry about the soap,” Harry says eventually, his voice soft, silently asking to end the fight. Louis slumps against him just a little more, digging his nose into Harry’s collarbone.

“Fuck the soap,” Louis mutters. “I honestly don’t even give a shit about the fucking soap.”

Harry doesn’t say anything, and Louis squeezes his eyes shut, trying to resist the feeling of everything caving inside his chest. Harry’s so good at this, knows him so well, knows when to just hold him and wait for Louis to put it all together in his head.

“I’m sorry,” Louis says after a long few moments. “For yelling.”

“I love you,” Harry tells him quietly, jaw moving against the crown of Louis’s head. 

“I’ve just been really stressed lately, you know, with everything, and having you around so much is honestly weird, like, I’m not used to it and I think I keep getting so angry because I’m just- I don’t know, confused? Maybe?”

“I love you,” Harry says again, a little more intently this time.

“I really do miss you when you’re not around, though,” Louis says, instead of what he knows Harry’s looking for. “Like, I’m not confused as to how I feel about you, you know that. I’m confused as in, like, it’s so weird having you so close for such a long period of time, I just-”

“Hey, bitch,” Harry cuts him off, pulling away an inch. Louis looks up at him, startled. “I love you,” Harry says, grinning now, waiting for Louis to catch on.

“I love you too,” Louis laughs, eyes shining. Harry doesn’t let go of him for a while, so Louis doesn’t fight to go anywhere, sinking into Harry’s arms like they’re the only place Louis’s ever felt at home. And maybe, he thinks, they are.


	8. always you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter occurs the night before the scene in the [adore you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22073206/chapters/52677490) chapter of [fine line](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22073206?view_full_work=true).

The moment Louis arrives in Jamaica, the rest of the world seems to wash away in the waves. Harry’s rented them some small, cabana-like house on a different part of the island from where they usually stay when they come here, and it’s gorgeous, like nowhere Louis’s ever been. Harry loves Jamaica, it’s always been sort of his _thing_ , but Louis gets fonder and fonder of it every time they visit. 

The house is quite small, incredibly private, right in the sand with its own little stretch of beach. It’s got windows almost all the way around, and Harry’s got every single one of them propped open, letting the breeze in through the gauzy white curtains and all through the house. Something is cooking, Louis can smell it before he’s even entered the house, and it makes him walk a little faster, just as eager to taste whatever it is Harry’s making as he is to see Harry himself.

Harry jumps when Louis pushes the door open, covering his bare chest with a tea towel to protect his modesty. He’s got loose linen shorts on, but that’s it, a pair of sunglasses atop his head despite the fact that it’s nearly sunset and he’s indoors. 

“Jesus,” he says, dropping the tea towel back on the counter when he sees that the intruder is only Louis. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“What, you weren’t expecting me?” Louis teases. “Were you waiting for your other boyfriend, or something?”

“No, I told you Mitch is busy this week,” Harry shrugs. It takes a moment for the line to click in Louis’s brain, but the second it does, Harry takes off running through the house, laughing brightly.

Louis hasn’t seen him in so long; he’s been in LA all week, and Louis’s been London for a good while now, and it feels like it’s been ages since it was just the two of them. Harry leads him right to the bedroom, probably on purpose, and Louis tackles him onto the bed, wrestling him a bit until Harry allows him to pin him down.

“Well,” Louis hisses, the tip of his nose nearly touching Harry’s, whose entire face is scrunched up from giggling, “you better tell Mitch your ring size, because I’m returning the ones I brought for you.”

Harry gasps, like Louis hasn’t given him a ring for every birthday, anniversary, and Tuesday afternoon for the past nine years. “You brought me presents?”

“Nope,” Louis says, nipping at Harry’s nose with his teeth and then rolling off of him easily. “Think I’ll go chuck them into the sea. Maybe a dolphin will find them, or something. Probably be more appreciative than you.”

“Lou,” Harry whines, catching him around the waist from behind in the hallway and hooking his chin over Louis’s shoulder. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Louis says, leaning back into him easily. “I missed you.”

“Enough to give me my presents?” Harry asks cheekily.

“Fuck off,” Louis says. “Feed me first.”

“I can do that,” Harry says, tugging him along back to the kitchen. They end up eating on the front deck facing the beach, watching the sunset over the water, not a sight or sound for miles to disturb them. There’s nothing like this place, this magical place; Louis’s only been here an hour, and they have all week, but he never wants to leave.

-

The sand down by the water is exceptionally soft, especially as the tide goes out and leaves the beach flat and clear in its wake. They’ve been spending the majority of their time out here, basking in the sunshine through the day and lounging about long after the sun has set, only going inside for snacks and drinks as needed. Harry makes a mean margarita, and Louis’s had just enough to make him feel like he’s floating, head tipped back against his lounge chair to watch Harry talk.

He’s not listening to a word Harry’s saying, hasn’t been since about the second drink. Harry’s just so lovely to listen to, though, even when Louis hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about. His voice is so deep and slow and pretty, Louis is too lost in the sound of it to understand a word he’s saying. 

He can’t help but think, watching Harry’s smiling face glistening in the moonlight with faint traces of sweat, of how amazing it is that after everything, after all these years, Harry is still the one. It’s always him, always been him, the reason why Louis gets up in the morning, the reason why he makes it from one day to the next. He’s been just about everywhere in the world, seen millions of faces, millions of smiles, voices, laughs, but not a single one of them even begins to compare to this boy here in front of him.

No matter what they do, no matter what they’re going through, Harry is always going to be the person he comes home to, the first person he thinks about when he wakes up, and the last person he thinks about before he falls asleep. It’s always going to be Harry, no matter where in the world they are, whether they’re together, apart, madly in love or in the midst of a blowout fight. Louis could kiss every person in the world and _combined_ it could not be better than kissing Harry, he’s absolutely sure of it, and he has absolutely no desire to test his theory.

“What the fuck are you looking at me like that for?” Harry says, and Louis startles when he notices that Harry’s finally meeting his eyes. “Are you even listening to me?”

“No I am not,” Louis says honestly, grinning over the rim of his margarita glass when Harry glares at him.

“Well, that sucks. You just missed the story of the time I shit on Jeff Azoff’s front lawn,” Harry shrugs.

“Wait, what?” Louis says, sitting up a little. “What the fuck, tell it again!

“No,” Harry says smugly, eyes set on the horizon as he drains the last of his drink into his mouth.

“Fucker,” Louis mutters, grabbing Harry’s empty glass out of his hand and tossing it into the sand.

Harry gasps, more concerned about the glass than he is about his boyfriend climbing into his lap. “Louis, that’s glass,” he says, reaching out to pick it up by the stem to make sure it isn’t damaged. “What if you broke it, and then I stepped on it tomorrow, or—“

“Shut the fuck up,” Louis says, catching Harry’s jaw in his hand and kissing him square on the mouth. “I love you so much, but shut the fuck up.”

“Okay,” Harry mumbles against Louis’s lips, dropping the glass right back into the sand when Louis shifts to lay him back against the lounger. 

The tide will creep up eventually, before they’re expecting it, and they probably won’t notice until it’s too late, and then they’ll run back to the house laughing and clinging to each other and maybe they’ll get into that massive shower in the ensuite together before they tuck themselves up in bed for the night, and then tomorrow will be spent mostly the same as today, laughing and loving each other in their own little slice of paradise, while they have it. All that matters now, though, is the cool breeze that slides through Louis’s t-shirt and over his back, driving him even closer to Harry, as if he needed any extra motivation. Harry opens up and invites him in, like he’s inviting him home, and Louis, as always, is more than eager to go.


	9. fearless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter occurs concurrently with the [canyon moon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22073206/chapters/52677844) chapter of [fine line](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22073206?view_full_work=true). (there is also a tiny reference to my fic [fearless](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23304559/chapters/55817479), because I couldn't help myself. lmk if you find it hehe)

Coming home to an empty house is never ideal, but it’s even worse when Louis’s in LA, when Harry isn’t here and all of Louis’s friends are in London and even Clifford is back at home, and Louis is so utterly alone. He’s never really liked LA all that much in the first place, and he likes the people here even less (which is to say he doesn’t like them at all), which doesn’t make it any easier. He prefers to spend as little time here as possible, if he can help it, but sometimes work drags him out here for meetings he can’t miss. He knows that Harry loves this city, and he doesn’t mind it so much when Harry’s here, too, but without him, this house is just big, ugly, and depressingly empty.

It’s already the middle of the night in England by the time Louis gets home, and as much as Louis hates being by himself, he doesn’t want to wake anyone up just to keep him company for a little while. Harry would do it, he knows, would answer the first time Louis called and would stay up all night with him just to make him happy, but Louis’s not quite selfish enough to do that to him, and besides, he’s a grown man, he can get along with himself for a little longer until he finally gets to go back home, where he belongs.

He stops by the bedroom to change out of his meeting attire and into his usual hoodie and trackies, pulling out his phone on his way to the music room to open up his message thread with Harry. Harry is almost definitely asleep right now, which means Louis is in the clear to send him a sweet message to wake up to, the way they always do for each other when they’re in different time zones. They’ve been doing it for almost ten years now, it’s almost second nature, at this point, to tap out a quick, _Good morning love xxx missing you hope you’re sleeping well._

He puts his phone down on the edge of the piano in his music room as he settles down on the bench, pressing a few random notes out of the keys just to distract himself from the silence. He’s being _so_ dramatic, he knows that, but it really does make him quite sad to be alone, and to think that he’s still got almost two more weeks out here before he’ll have enough free time to go back home. 

Soon enough, all of this will be over. He’s finishing his contract with Syco in a few months time, and then Simon will never be able to drag him out to California against his will ever again. He’s heading for that bright spot on the horizon like a ship to a lighthouse in a storm, focused on one thing and one thing only: getting through it.

Simon has been doing everything in his power, especially as of late, to keep Louis right under his thumb, where he likes to keep him. Louis is the last pawn in Simon’s possession and they both know it; they’ve been holding that fact like a gun to each other’s heads for years now, and Louis is finally, _finally_ about to pull the trigger. It’s going to feel so good watching Simon lose everything he’s been torturing Louis in order to keep for all these years now, and Louis is finally going to be able to be exactly who he wants to be, make the music he wants to make, all without Simon’s heavy hand always clasping the back of his neck.

He’s been thinking a lot about the past lately, as it all draws to its final act with his contract ending soon. It all seemed so perfect back then, too good to be true, and it probably was, even though it felt like nothing could possibly go wrong. Louis doesn’t remember thinking it over for a moment before he signed that first contract, doesn’t remember thinking at _all_ , if he’s honest. It was all adrenaline and the promise of never losing his four new best friends, taking over the world with them the way he’d always dreamt of, and there were no downsides to any of it that he could see then. Even now, he’s not sure he would go back and change it, if he could, but he’s ready for this part to be over, ready to stop being stifled and stunted and to finally be allowed to spread his wings and grow as an artist.

Above all else, he’s over the moon about the promise of being able to make exactly the kind of music he wants to make when he’s no longer under Simon’s control. He can’t push his album back again, he knows that, and he doesn’t want to, but he would kill for just a taste of freedom with his sound, the ability to make whatever he wants to make whenever he wants to make it, like all the others have been able to do. It didn’t bother him so much at first, when they were all so young and clueless without a care or a fear in the world, but now, Louis has everything to lose, and he’s ready to risk it all to be who he wants to be.

He tunes back into the real world belatedly, finding that he’s still poking around at the piano keys, making a disjointed little melody that bounces around the room like loose change. He keeps going once he notices that he’s doing it, playing around until he plays something he actually likes, grabbing his phone to record it in a voice memo and then working out the rest of the melody. 

Before he knows it, he’s got lyrics in his head, a whole concept to fill out the rest of the song. He runs back to the entry hall, where he left his laptop in his bag, and spends the rest of the evening writing the most honest song he can get away with to describe this feeling, this melancholic nostalgia, or whatever this is.

It goes quick, the writing, and once he’s happy with what he has, he wastes no time in recording a rough demo of it on his laptop, getting it all down before he loses it. These projects are his favorite, the spur of the moment type, the one-night one-take type that he can bring straight into the studio, and whether it makes it onto the album or not, at least he enjoyed the process.

He loves the process a little too much, on this go, because by the time he finally saves all his work and decides to call it a night, the sun has fully gone down and come back up, shining in through the window and directly into his burning eyes.

He checks his phone for the time, unable to believe that it could already be morning, and the moment he picks it up, his lock screen floods with notifications from Harry from throughout the night. It makes Louis smile, reading through them, because he loves when Harry gets like this, texting him over and over even though he knows Louis is asleep, or thinks he is, anyway, because he should be.

Harry: _Good morning, sunshine! Been thinking about you all morning.. :( Text me when you wake up. Love you! H._

Harry: _Still thinking about you… I know you’re sleeping but I miss you! Wake up soon PLEASE xxx_

Harry: _Can we FaceTime when you wake up?_

Harry: _I MISS YOU!!!!_

All of the messages are a few hours apart, like Harry was really thinking about him all day long, just waiting for him to wake up and reply. He’s staying with Gemma this week, Louis’s pretty sure, which is probably making him miss Louis extra, given how sweet Gemma and her boyfriend always are. He taps out his response on his way back to the bedroom to change back into his meeting attire, because he’s got things to do today and he’s already running late.

_You are so pathetic!! Love you and I miss you too !!!_

Harry: _Can we FaceTime?_

Harry’s reply is instantaneous, pops up before Louis has even had time to put his phone down, and Louis rolls his eyes, tapping out another response.

_Can we in a few hours ?? Woke up late and am rushing to studio_

Harry: _:(((( Fine. Don’t forget to text! You are not off the hook!_

Louis grins, hastily changing into a clean set of clothes and making it out the door in record time, rushing off to fulfill the obligations he’s got laid out for today. He texts Harry again before he’s even gotten back in the car, because he knows Harry’s missing him terribly, and as amusing as that might be, he hates to keep Harry waiting.

_Heading home !! I’ll call in 10? X_

Harry only sends a grinning emoji in response, so Louis puts his phone away, only pulling it out again once he’s arrived home. He’s got to go out again in a little while, so he doesn’t go any further than the living room, plopping down on the sofa and opening Harry’s contact to call him.

“Woah,” Louis says, Harry’s face appearing instantly on his screen. “It didn’t even ring.”

“I was waiting around,” Harry says. “How’s your day?”

“Only just started,” Louis chuckles. “Spent an hour at the radio station, and I have a meeting in, like, thirty minutes that I don’t want to go to,” he says through a bite of the bagel he got on the way home. 

“Don’t go,” Harry says. “Stay here and talk to me. Better yet, find your ass on a plane back to London.”

“I wish,” Louis chuckles sadly. “LA is nice, but it’s no fun when you’re not here.”

“Two weeks,” Harry says. “Two weeks, and I’ll be home.”

Louis frowns, shaking his head. “No, _I’ll_ be home,” he says, confused. “You’re already there.”

“It’s not home when you’re not here,” Harry says, like some kind of romance movie protagonist. Louis rolls his eyes, having another bite of his bagel.

“I can’t deal with you,” Louis says, but he doesn’t sound like he means it, even to his own ears.

“I love you!” Harry says, pulling the phone close to his face. “I love you!” he says again, louder.

“Dork,” Louis mutters, trying and failing to hide his smile behind his bagel.

Harry pouts, glaring into Louis’s soul from halfway around the world, and it doesn’t take long to make Louis smile.

“I love you too, weirdo,” he says.

Harry grins, showing the phone camera all of his teeth. Louis laughs and pulls his phone closer to smack his lips off the camera, and then both of them giggle like children.

“Right,” Louis sighs after a minute, “I need to get going or I’ll be late to another thing today.”

“No,” Harry says, pouting once more. “Already?”

“I’ll text you again when I get back, yeah? I’ll have a bit more time to talk after this meeting, so if you’re still up, I’ll call then. Okay?”

“Okay,” Harry says. He sounds so disappointed, it breaks Louis’s heart. 

“Okay,” Louis says. “I love you, Hazza, a lot.”

“I love you a lot,” Harry says quietly.

“Bye, baby,” Louis says, blowing him one more kiss and then ending the call before Harry can distract him any further. 

He rushes through the rest of his day, eager to get back home and call Harry back, maybe play him some of the song he wrote last night, and maybe they can stay on the line until Harry falls asleep, the way Harry always does for him, and Louis will mute his end of the line and keep the call connected for as long as he can, just to trick himself into feeling like Harry’s here, he’s right beside him, and not so terribly far away.

He texts Harry the moment he gets home from his meeting, plopping down on the sofa and pulling his phone out of his back pocket to open their text thread.

_I’m home!! Can I call ?_

He waits a few minutes, scrolling through Instagram while he waits for Harry to reply, but he never does. It’s barely midnight in London, surely too early for Harry to have given up on waiting for Louis’s text, but Harry Styles is nothing if not a borderline narcoleptic and really, Louis shouldn’t even be surprised.

_You fuckin fell asleep didn’t you_

_Way to go, stupid!!! All that grief and you fall asleep before I even get to talk to you properly!!!!_

_Goodnight love . Sleep tight xx_

He spends the rest of the evening resisting the urge to keep texting Harry the way Harry did to him; Harry’s a heavy sleeper, but Louis’s not quite as shameless as Harry when it comes to affection, would rather at least maintain the illusion that he’s got better things to do than sit around and wait for his boyfriend to text him back. As it is, though, he doesn’t have anything better to do, so he decides to call it an early night, exhaustion pulling him under with the sweet reminder that when he wakes up, he’ll be one less sleep from going home again.


	10. perfect now

It all becomes very real a few days before the album comes out, when Louis finishes signing all the presale orders and boxes them up to get them shipped out in time for the release. He’s looked at his own face a couple hundred thousand times in the past week or so and yet he’s still not as desensitized to it as he would like to be, staring at himself in the mirror in the ensuite and trying to tie himself to the guy on the album cover.

He looks so powerful in that photo, so in control, all sharp edges against a blank backdrop and a stony expression to match, the picture of confidence. Here, though, in this mirror, wet hair slicked away from his face and his skin a little flushed still from the shower, he doesn’t see any of that in himself, doesn’t see an ounce of the power he likes to pretend he has over his life. Like this, he looks like a kid again, like a scared, stupid kid, about to put yet another thing out into the world that he’ll never be able to take back. He’s been waiting months for this, and so has everyone else, he knows that, and he’s terribly excited, but he’s also terribly afraid of the reality of it, the _finality_ of it; this is his first solo album, and there will be others, there will be a lot of things, but this will always be _this_ , this will always be his _first_ , his , his—

There’s a soft knock on the door, so quiet Louis barely hears it over all the noise in his head, but it still makes him jump.

“Lou?” Harry’s voice calls hesitantly. “You forgot a box of CDs to be signed, love.”

Louis’s stomach drops. There’s no way he missed a box, he double checked, _triple_ checked, licked his fingers between each and every vinyl insert to make sure he didn’t miss a single one. He whips the bathroom door open to find Harry standing sheepishly in the doorway, trying not to laugh.

“No fucking way,” Louis growls. “Are you serious? I’m not doing them. I’ll personally refund the orders, I’m not signing another bloody—“

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” Harry says, finally letting himself crack as he pulls Louis into his arms. “Geez, tough crowd.”

“Not funny,” Louis says, biting just a touch too hard at Harry’s chest. 

“Ow,” Harry says, but he doesn’t let Louis go. “Sorry, you know I’m shit at pranks.”

“Don’t prank me, then, asswipe,” Louis says, worming his way out of Harry’s hug to go back to the mirror, ostensibly to finish drying his hair. He pulls the towel from around his waist and scrubs a little too aggressively at his head, like he’s trying to remove more than the excess moisture in his hair.

“Hey,” Harry says, snatching the towel away before Louis is done. “Be gentle,” he says, dutifully ignoring the glare Louis gives him as he brushes the towel over Louis’s hair, squeezing out the water until it’s not dripping anymore. He drapes the towel over Louis’s shoulders when he’s finished, dropping a kiss to the tip of Louis’s nose and keeping himself firmly between Louis and the mirror.

“What are you doing?” Louis asks resignedly.

“Nothing,” Harry says, draping his arms over Louis’s shoulders. 

“Harry,” Louis says.

“You seem stressed,” Harry says, finally. “And I know how murky things get in that head of yours when you get stressed, so I just wanted to remind you that I love you, and you’re perfect, and I love you.”

“You said ‘I love you’ twice,” Louis says.

Harry frowns. “What did I say twice?”

“I love you,” Louis repeats.

“I love you, too,” Harry beams, immensely pleased with himself once Louis sees what he’s done.

“Fuck off,” Louis says, trying his damnedest not to let himself smile. “Go away.”

“No,” Harry says, kissing his nose once again.

“Yes,” Louis says. “I’m naked, I literally just got out of the shower, and—“

“I want to dance,” Harry says, dropping his arms from Louis’s shoulders to take him by the hands, instead. “Dance with me.”

“I don’t want to dance,” Louis whines. “I want to put pants on.”

“Okay, fine, put pants on,” Harry says. “And then dance with me.”

Louis grumbles all the way to the dresser, pulling on a pair of boxers and dropping his towel into a heap on the floor in hopes of distracting Harry just long enough to get away. Harry doesn’t even seem to notice the towel, though, not with his one track mind, and before Louis knows it, Harry’s pulling him against his chest in the center of their bedroom, giving him very little room to escape.

“Dance with me,” Harry says, lips pressed to the shell of Louis’s ear. “Please? Just a little dance,” he says.

“Don’t use my own lyrics against me,” Louis says, trying and failing to push himself away from Harry’s chest. “Harry—“

“Keep your head up, love, keep your head up,” Harry sings, rocking Louis around the bedroom a bit. “Don't hide away, don't ever change. Keep your head up, love, keep your head up, don't look away, don't look away—“

“Stop,” Louis says, but he can’t help but smile just a little, still trying to wrestle himself out of Harry’s hold.

“Everybody’s looking at you now, my, oh my, I guess some queens don’t need a—“

Louis manages to clap one hand over Harry’s mouth, but Harry keeps singing, anyway, giggling against Louis’s fingers, until Louis is left with no choice but to pull his hand away and kiss Harry, instead, just to get him to shut up.

The kissing makes the dancing stop, apparently, so Louis lets it linger, lets Harry squeeze him a little closer and kiss him a little deeper if only so that Harry will stop dragging him around the bedroom in his underwear. 

Harry pulls away first, blinking his glassy eyes open like some kind of cartoon character. Louis’s so in love with him it hurts, and that’s probably why he decides to run, elbowing Harry in the gut and making a break for the hallway.

“Hey!” Harry shouts, tearing after him without a second thought. “You fucking dick! You distracted me with kisses just to escape!”

Harry catches him in the kitchen, getting both arms around his waist from behind and nearly sending the both of them toppling down onto the tile floor. Louis catches himself just in time on the kitchen table but Harry decides to follow through with the momentum, dragging Louis all the way down onto the floor and forcing him into a cuddle.

“What the _fuck_ , Harry, I just showered!” Louis whines, but he doesn’t try very hard to get away this time, because Harry’s got him good.

“Fuck off, as _if_ these floors are dirty,” Harry scoffs. “If you had just fucking _danced_ with me—“

“Harry?” Louis says, voice soft, the tone that always gets Harry to listen.

“Yeah?” Harry asks, immediately concerned.

“Thank you,” Louis says, staring hard at the leg of the kitchen table in front of him.

Harry doesn’t say anything for a moment, but then he squeezes Louis gently. “You’re welcome.”

“I am stressed,” Louis admits. Something about knowing that Harry can’t see his face is giving him something of a confidence boost, so he closes his eyes and rolls with it. “I’m really nervous about the album, and everything. I’m just— I’m stressed.”

“I know you are,” Harry says. “And it’s okay that you are. It’s a stressful thing. But I know that it’s all going to pay off for you, Lou, you know? All the stress, all the nerves, it’s all going to be worth it.”

“Yeah,” Louis says, staring at the leg of the table for a few seconds longer. “Can we dance, maybe? For real, this time?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Harry says, pushing himself up off the floor and running to get his phone, soft music filling the kitchen hardly a moment later.

They dance the rest of the evening away like they haven’t a care in the world, and for right now, they really don’t. Louis hardly thinks about his troubles for the rest of the night, until he’s tucked up in bed beside Harry, safe and warm in his arms. No matter what happens now, he knows he’s going to be alright, as long as he’s got Harry to dance him through it all.


	11. defenceless

He’s already been awake for several hours when the plane lands in New York, but it’s still so early that the sky is only faintly gray, barely distinguishable from the contour of the city skyline. It’s freezing outside, but he can’t be bothered to put on his coat, pulling the sleeves of his knit jumper down over his hands and ducking quickly into the car waiting for him outside of the airport.

He hasn’t been able to stop checking Twitter in days. The album is officially out everywhere in the world, and the reaction from the fans is incredible, and addicting, he just keeps refreshing his feed to watch the love pour in. He feels like a weight has been lifted off of him, the weight of the shell he’s been walking around in, maybe, and now he’s bare for the world to see, to scrutinize, learning the words to all of his songs to sing them back to him later tonight.

It’s an incredibly busy day, what with all of the promo, interviews and meeting fans and impromptu photoshoots, the Spotify billboard in Times Square near his hotel, the flyers he keeps finding floating about the city that someone made to promote the album. He feels like it’s been a year since he woke up by the time he arrives to the record shop in Brooklyn, but he also feels like he’ll never sleep again, bouncing up the ramp from the car to the stage door, waving to all the people lined up on the opposite side of the street, smile plastered on his face. 

The rest of the afternoon passes in a blur, too; he’s so full of adrenaline and pure ecstasy, so over the moon at the reaction to the album, he can hardly focus on anything, desperate to get on with the day and then get the chance to meet the people that are making this all happen for him.

It’s finally here, he thinks, the day he’s been waiting on for so, _so_ long. For the first time in what feels like forever, for what might actually _be_ forever, he’s on top of the world, feet planted firmly beneath himself, strong and sturdy. There’s nothing in the world that could bring him down now, or ever again. He almost wishes he could go back in time to a few years ago, when he was at his absolute lowest, and show himself all the wonders that were to come for him, the mind blowing reality of where he is now, in New York City, getting ready to play a few songs from _his album_ to a room full of people who adore him, _him_! It feels like a fever dream, even as he’s living through it, pinching himself every few seconds as he gets ready to go out on stage just to make sure that he’s awake and not simply having the best dream he’s ever had.

The venue is quite small, barely more than two hundred people, but it’s packed wall to wall and floor to ceiling with bodies, happy people as happy as he is, filling the entire space with their thundering support the second he steps onto the stage. 

It’s a short set, only four songs, but the crowd eats it up, tosses flowers at his feet before he goes, leaves his ears ringing and his heart racing. He’s exhausted, but he thinks he’ll never sleep again, too addicted to all of the excitement, high on the feeling of all of it.

He spends the rest of the evening meeting the fans that came out to see him, signing records and holding hands and trying to memorize all of it, every moment, every face and voice and smile and tear. He wants to live in this day for the rest of his life, wants to feel as free and as loved and as unstoppable as he does right now. 

At the end of the night, the venue security clears a path for him through the people that have congregated in the shop, and Louis doesn’t stop smiling the entire way out the door, all but floating into the car waiting for him on the curb.

The ride back to the hotel is quite rowdy, now that they finally have time to celebrate properly. Louis’s had three shots of tequila before they even leave Brooklyn, and as tired as he is, he’s only just getting started. This is the best day of his life, he knows that for a fact, and he fully intends to make as much of it as he possibly can. 

As if the universe is determined to give him only the best for today, Eleanor excuses herself quietly the moment they get back to the hotel, aware of the fact that Louis doesn’t even have the capacity to offer her a pity invitation, at the moment. They head to Oli’s room, the rest of them, and Louis loses track of everything for a little while after that, replacing all of the blood in his body with equal parts alcohol and pure happiness. 

He doesn’t get back to his own room until the early hours of the next morning, but he’s got his phone out before the door’s even all the way closed, falling into bed in his clothes and tapping clumsily around his home screen.

Harry answers on the first ring, like he was waiting up for Louis’s call which, knowing him, he was. Louis smiles blearily, blacked out but still overjoyed.

“Harry,” he sings quietly, pressing his smile into his pillow. “Happy birthday!”

“Thank you, love,” Harry says, watching him fondly from the pillow of his own hotel bed. “I’m so, so proud of you.”

“Today was such a good day,” Louis says, eyes half open as he stares at Harry’s pixelated face on his phone screen. 

“Good,” Harry says. “You absolutely deserve it. You’ve worked so hard for this, Lou, you deserve all the best days in the world.”

Louis giggles quietly, a little too drunk to express the way his heart keeps fluttering at the sound of Harry’s voice. “I heard your show got cancelled,” he says instead, pulling a little frown.

“It got more than cancelled,” Harry scoffs, “it got absolutely fucked. I’ve never seen a storm this bad in my _life_.”

“I wish you were here,” Louis admits. “I wish you could’ve been here.”

“Me too,” Harry says. “If I’d known the day was going to go like this, I would’ve snuck out of Miami to New York somehow just to hide in the hotel until you got back, or something. I want to hug you so bad right now,” he sighs.

“Harry,” Louis says, rolling over in the bed and taking the duvet with him, wrapping himself up like a burrito.

“Lou,” Harry says, smiling softly when Louis stops fidgeting so much and settles down.

“I’m so happy,” Louis says.

“You should be,” Harry says. “You should always be this happy.”

“I will be,” Louis says. “I’ll never be sad again.”

“Good,” Harry chuckles. “I’m gonna kiss you so hard next time I see you.”

“Good,” Louis grins, snuggling down a little further into his blanket cocoon. “I’m gonna kiss you harder, birthday boy.”

“Bet,” Harry says, like some kind of American teenager. Louis rolls his eyes.

“I’m really tired,” Louis says. “And really drunk.”

“Yeah, I can tell, on both counts,” Harry says. “Get some sleep, love.”

“Don’t wanna hang up,” Louis pouts. 

“We don’t have to,” Harry says, shifting around a little to prop his phone up against something instead of holding it. 

“I love you,” Louis says. “I’m so happy, and I love you, and happy birthday.”

“Thank you, and I love you, too,” Harry giggles. “You’re so cute.”

“I’m so happy,” Louis says once again, finally letting his eyes fall closed. “Harry?”

“Yes, love?” Harry whispers. 

“I don’t want this feeling to go away,” Louis says. “Ever.”

“It never will, darling,” Harry says. “It only gets better from here, promise.”

Louis grins, nuzzling into his pillow and letting himself start to drift off. All he can think, as he falls asleep, is that he hopes to hell that Harry is right, that it will only get better from here. Everything is about to change, everything that hasn’t already changed, and six months from now, he’ll be a brand new man, finally, _finally_ living every dream he’s ever dreamt. He’s never been quite this vulnerable before, knowing that the whole world is out there, just outside the window of his hotel room, listening to his songs, memorizing the words, scrutinizing every syllable and trying to put the story together piece by piece. He just hopes that they like whatever they find there between the lines, and that they’re ready for whatever comes next, because it’ll be even bigger and better, somehow, he’s sure of it.


	12. only the brave

_@Louis_Tomlinson: Hope everyone is doing ok! Just wanted to let you know that Syco Music and I have agreed to part ways. I'm really excited for the future and to be back in the studio writing the next album. Can't wait to finally see you all on tour!!_   
_Stay safe and see you soon, Louis x_

He waits for the tweet to load at the top of his timeline after he’s hit the button to publish it, watching as the likes and replies instantly start pouring in. He can’t help but smile, turning over onto his back to glance over at Harry; Harry’s not paying an ounce of attention to him, scrolling through something on his phone, but he looks up when he feels Louis looking at him, eyes widening at the smile on his face.

“Did you do it?” Harry asks, locking his phone and sitting up a little.

“Yeah,” Louis says, handing over his own phone when Harry reaches for it. “I did it.”

“Holy shit,” Harry says, staring down at the screen for a few silent moments. 

“Yeah,” Louis says again.

“Louis,” Harry says, and Louis opens his eyes, finding Harry looming over him, grinning. “ _Louis_.”

“I’m free,” Louis says, opening his arms for Harry to launch himself into.

“You’re free,” Harry says into his neck, squeezing him half to death. “You did it.”

Louis nudges him a little, but Harry only goes far enough to allow Louis to grab his phone back, curling into his side with his head resting on Louis’s shoulder to watch him scroll through the outpouring of support under the tweet. 

It’s only early evening, but they never opened the blinds in the bedroom today, and only the faintest hint of the sunset light is leaking into the room. They’ve hardly gotten out of bed at all today, actually; it’s been hard to see each other very much over the past few months, having gotten stuck in lockdown on opposite sides of the globe, but they’ve been soaking up every minute they can get together since Harry’s found his way back to the UK. Louis’s been waiting for just the right moment to share this news with the world, and this is it, he thinks, cuddled up with Harry, the world healing slowly around them.

He waits a few minutes before he replies to anyone on Twitter, and when he does, he tries to keep it as calm and casual as he can, but it’s almost impossible to ignore the sheer excitement on his timeline. His fans are smart, they know exactly what’s going on, and he would like nothing more than to join in the celebration that appears to be ensuing before his eyes, but he refrains, settling on reassuring a few worried fans and then settling back to watch the joy unfold.

He tweets a few more things, a response to their old drummer he hasn’t spoken to in years, and a quick tweet about an album he’s been loving, just to add to the air of nonchalance he’s trying to maintain over the situation. He spends the next hour or so just lurking in the replies to his tweet and even browsing his indirects, careful not to like anything, showing Harry his favorites and giggling to himself at the mayhem he’s created. It doesn’t take very long to get completely overwhelmed, though, and when he thinks he can’t take it anymore, he tweets one final ‘thank you’ for all of the support and then tosses his phone to the foot of the bed.

Harry shifts a little, like he knows what’s coming next, and Louis rolls directly on top of him, burying his face in Harry’s neck and holding his breath for a few long seconds. Harry holds him tight, one hand cradling the back of Louis’s head, his other hand smoothing over the small of Louis’s back in gentle circles.

“I’m so proud of you,” Harry says, voice rumbling right into Louis’s ear. It makes him shiver, so he presses closer, and Harry holds him tighter. “You did it, love,” Harry breathes. “You’re free.”

“Yeah,” Louis says, muffled into Harry’s bare shoulder. 

“You’re so brave,” Harry says, pressing a lingering kiss to the side of Louis’s head, and then another closer to his hairline. “You’re so fucking brave, and now everyone’s going to know it.”

Louis doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, what the universe has in store from him here on out, but for the first time in forever, that doesn’t terrify him. It brings tears to his eyes, but they’re happy tears, tears that make Harry laugh and squeeze the rest of the breath out of him when he feels them touch his skin. It’s been almost ten years, ten entire years of loving this boy, finding their way through life together, and for the first time, Louis knows without a doubt that he was right, all those years ago, when he told Harry that they’d be alright. He’s never felt so powerful, so independent, so lucky, and how fitting it is, he thinks, that his journey will end the same way it began; right here in Harry’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked the fic, you can reblog it [here](https://suspendrs.tumblr.com/post/625705936350314496/walls-by-suspendrs-20k-the-thing-about-having)
> 
> [faq](http://suspendrs-fics.tumblr.com/faq)
> 
> if you're into rereading fics, boy have i got a gift for you: i've compiled every chapter from all three of my albums fics into chronological order, so if you'd like to relive this story from beginning to end, [here's a PDF](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R1ZAxJYzikUVUbcPO4yQGRVZBa2wZ6VH/view?usp=sharing) which includes every chapter from the series in order of the timeline I created. now, i hear you saying, liv, how am i supposed to read the whole series in chronological order without a corresponding playlist? don't worry, [i got you](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5GRZUIoCccMW8cNNXg506Q?si=rl8lkJ-_QE6Ic7PRf19z1w).
> 
> please do not translate, repost, or recreate this work in any way. thank you!


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